little motherland
TRANSCRIPT
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LITTLE MOTHERLAND
The Role of School-Museums and Kraevedenie in the Contemporary Russian Historical Politics
By
Boglárka Mácsai
Submitted to
Central European University
History Department
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
Supervisor: Professor Alexei Miller
Second Reader: Professor Marsha Siefert
Budapest, Hungary
2013
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Copyright in the text of this thesis rests with the Author. Copies by any process, either in full
or part may be made only in accordance with the instructions given by the Author and lodged in
the Central European Library. Details may be obtained from the librarian. This page must
form a part of any such copies made. Further copies made in accordance with such instructions
may not be made without the written permission of the Author.
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Abstract
After the political transition in postsocialist states the reconsideration of socialist past
became a crucial part of historical politics. The abolition or rearrangement of monuments and
museums have been the clearest and the most visible manifestations of new historical
interpretations, but in many countries political judgments of certain events in the past have been
adjusted to the present-day situations, as well. Scholars have been highly engaged with the
scrutiny of the phenomenon in large-scale, however, there is less research devoted to the role
and changes of local perceptions and representations of history in the broader and narrower
political contexts and the agency of local actors.
The aim of Russian historical politics was to create historical continuity between the
Soviet Union and the Russian Federation, preserve the relevance of memory of the Great
Patriotic War in the national historical memory and solve the integration of the multiethnic
nation. The issue of multiethnicity was especially crucial in Bashkortostan; therefore minorities
living there have got broader space for the representation of their identity and political lobby.
Due to these political circumstances Trans-Kama Udmurts could take advantage of certain
institutional and financial sources and revived their ethnic culture.
The most visual and complex manifestations of these different politics are the school-
museums and kraevedenie-classes (local history). I have chosen three Udmurt museums located
in the same district to analyze their exhibitions and highlight the local actors’ motivation and
agency. Through my analysis I intend to show (1) how these school-museums reflect different
levels of history; (2) what leaders of museums consider to be relevant in their work; and (3)
how this work is affected by the republic and the federation.
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Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 5
Theoretical and Historical Backgrounds ....................................................................................... 9
Historical Politics in the Russian Federation ............................................................................. 9
Motherland(s) .......................................................................................................................... 12
The History of Kraevedenie ..................................................................................................... 17
A Flower with Seven Petals ........................................................................................................ 23
Political contexts in the contemporary Republic of Bashkortostan ......................................... 23
Genuine Udmurts – Trans-Kama Udmurts in Bashkortostan .................................................. 32
Tatyshly District – The Texture of the Field ........................................................................... 35
Treasure Chests of Schools ......................................................................................................... 41
School-museums ...................................................................................................................... 42
Urazgildy .............................................................................................................................. 44
Nizhniy Baltachevo .............................................................................................................. 47
Novye Tatyshly .................................................................................................................... 51
Different Levels of History Represented in the Museum ........................................................ 56
The Center of Civic and Patriotic Education ........................................................................... 66
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 70
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................ 72
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Introduction
“Rodnik (spring) and Rodina (Motherland) have common stem.
The little spring flows into great rivers
and the knowledge of the history of our own Little Motherland
serves the fundament of every people’s life.”1
After the political transition in postsocialist states the reconsideration of socialist past
became a crucial part of historical politics. The abolition or rearrangement of monuments and
museums have been the clearest and the most visible manifestations of new historical
interpretations, but in many countries political judgments of certain events in the past have been
adjusted to the present-day situations, as well. Scholars have been highly engaged with the
scrutiny of the phenomenon, however, these works pay attention mostly to, first of all,
institutions and state-museums financed and controlled by governments,2 secondly, a large-
scale overview of the politicians’ historical-political agency3 and thirdly, academic debates on
the official position of certain historical questions.4 There is less research devoted to the role
and changes of local perceptions and representations of history in the broader and narrower
political contexts and the agency of the local actors.
1 Quotation from a local historian’s report of a school-museum in Tatyshly district.
2 Benjamin Forest and Juliet Johnson, “Unraveling the Threads of History: Soviet-Era Monuments and Post-Soviet
National Identity on Moscow” in: Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 92 (2002); Frazon Zsófia,
Múzeum és kiállítás. Az újrarajzolás terei [Museums and exhibition. Spaces of re-design] (Budapest, Gondolat,
2011) 3 Stefan Berger, “German History Politics and the National Socialist Past” in The Convolutions of Historical
Politics, ed. Alexei Miller and Maria Lipman (Budapest – New York, Central European University Press, 2012);
Alexei Miller, “The Turns of Russian Historical Politics, from Perestroika to 2011” In: Alexei Miller and Maria
Lipman, “The Convolutions” 4 Maciej Janowski, “Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: Debating the History of a Single Day” in: Alexei Miller and Maria
Lipman, “The Convolutions”
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After the dissolution of the Soviet Union the new state intended to create a historical
continuity between the Soviet and Russian past. The intention was manifested not only in
politics and science, but also in symbolic fields like renaming of streets, rearranging of
monuments or revising the content of textbooks. The issue is examined and discussed by many
scholars and from many aspects,5 but not from the angles of local communities and actors. My
intention is to bring the dimension of locality into the scale and highlight different interests,
motivations and manifestations of local actors’ agency in order to receive a more refined and
sophisticated image of the present-day usage of history for political motivations in the Russian
Federation.
Kraevedenie (local history) and school-museums are excellent examples of that how
different historical politics contest or complete each other in accordance with their political
interests. In the Russian Federation there are approximately six thousand school-museums
named museums of kraevedenie and located in the schools of small villages all over the country.
Approximately one tenth of these museums are located in Bashkortostan: six hundred sixty
museums, which possess official certifications, besides there are as many “unofficial” school-
museums as certificated ones.6 These school-museums are deemed to be the treasure chests of
schools, which keep and contain the local knowledge of the local and/or ethnic communities.
The museums usually consist of many parts such as the memory of war heroes, the history of
5 Forest and Johnson, “Unraveling; Miller, “The Turns”; Lev Gudkov, “The Fetters of Victory. How the War
Provides Russia with its Identity” in: Eurozine, http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2005-05-03-gudkov-en.html,
accessed: 28-05-2013; Elizabeth A. Wood: "Performing Memory: Vladimir Putin and World War II in Russia,"
The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 38: 2 (2011); Vera Tolz, “Homeland Myths and Nation-State Building in
Postcommunist Russia.” In: Slavic Review. 57:2; Tatiana Zhurzhenko, “Heroes into Victims. The Second World
War in Post-Soviet Memory Politics” in: Eurozine, http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2012-10-31-zhurzhenko-
en.html, accessed: 28-05-2013 6
“Guidebook of School-Museums of Republic of Bashkortostan”, (Путеводитель по школьным музеям
Республики Башкортостан; Putevoditel’ po shkol’nym muzejam Respubliki Bashkortostan), Ministry of
Education Republic of Bashkortostan – National Children Recreational and Educational Center of Tourism,
Kraevedenie and Excursion, Ufa 2010: 4.
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school, the history of agriculture and kolkhoz, famous writers and artists born in the village and
ethnographic materials from the first half of the 20th
century. They are the primary places of the
so-called patriotic upbringing held in the framework of kraevedenie-classes. Although the
foundation of the museums is initiated and organized by local actors willingly, but since
museums and kraevedenie-classes play very important role in the patriotic upbringing and their
reputation and success bear significant prestige among teachers and the local elite, more and
more museums are established and recognized officially by the state. The content and the
design of the school-museums are influenced in three levels. First of all, local teachers and
students collect artifacts and create exhibitions, so they have a direct impact on the museums.
Secondly, the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Bashkortostan – National Children
Recreational and Educational Center of Tourism, Kraevedenie and Excursion coordinates the
work of all school-museums in the republic, thus methodological brochures and contests
organized by the Center shape museums to a large extent, too. Thirdly, the reinterpreted
Russian history serves as a basic background of all exhibitions, without which local histories
cannot be interpreted.
In my thesis I use the expression of ‘Little Motherland’ (Malaya Rodina) borrowed from
local people in order to reflect on this high complexity of multilevel embeddedness. ‘Little
Motherland’ means the native land where somebody was born and refers to its whole-part
relationship with the greater Motherland. ‘Little Motherland’ is not only a symbol, but also an
analytical term in this thesis. As I am going to explicate later, it is a special interpretation of
locality, which delineates the place of my fieldwork as well.
Anthropology has had its own particular method for the scrutiny of small-scale
communities for more than eighty years, and that is the so-called long-term and intensive
fieldwork. The participant observation is one of the most characteristic features of this method,
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according to which the anthropologist lives and works together with a certain community,
participates in its everyday life including all its spheres and through this process is able to know
the local social structures and institutions, emic worldviews or local receptions and narratives
of regional, ethnic, national, state or global phenomena. The parallel monitoring of different
levels initiates the mapping of discourses going on among these levels and the more
comprehensive understanding how social and cultural institutions are constructed by the
dialectical relationship of these groups.
The disadvantage (or the beauty) of humanities, that the scholar cannot distil herself out
of her work entirely, is especially true for the anthropological fieldwork. An anthropologist
lives together with her examined subjects, involuntarily shapes events and relationships in the
field with her mere presence, even if she is very prudent and careful. Some people are more
opened and tell their entire life-stories her without any reservations; others are self-contained
and suspicious, because they simply do not understand what a young girl is doing in a small
village in the middle of nowhere. This unique situation has a huge influence on the people who
are willing to show and reveal details of their every-day life to the researcher; thus, her
comprehension is always fragmented and partial. However, the researcher’s large involvement
in the local life is the reason, due to which she can reach a deeper understanding of social and
cultural phenomenon. Therefore, I argue in science that the combination of different methods
and interdisciplinary work can facilitate more thorough and comprehensive research and
analysis, which are also important aims of my thesis.
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Theoretical and Historical Backgrounds
Historical Politics in the Russian Federation
Socialist regimes in Eastern European countries intended to keep under control all
spheres of life, not only politics, economy and social issues, but the tiniest things as well. In his
book “The Good Stalin” based on autobiographic motives, Viktor Yerofeyev reports about this
omnipresent authority not without a good deal of irony: [Stalin and Molotov] required that all
problems of the extremely centralized state should reach them from global issues to the
tailoring pattern of women's pullovers or to the question of Moscow's public toilets, the lack of
which made Stalin rebuke Khruschew in the midst of the great terror. Even for his citizens'
spending a penny Stalin took responsibility.”7
Science was not an exception to the rule, but one of the most important tools of the
legitimization of socialist ideology. Especially the study of history, which was supposed to
augment the glory of socialist peoples, but was under high pressure of censorship, ideological
monopoly and administrative control.8 After political transformations new states went through
essential changes and tried to acquire a new political culture with democratic values including
freedom of speech, which enabled historians to broaden theories and methods of their discipline
in accordance with researches. However, history has not remained a politics-free sphere; it
became a very significant part of politics of memory, that is to say, historical politics.
The original term of historical politics – Geschichtpolitik – was coined in Germany
during the famous Historikerstreit (Historians’ Controversy). Helmut Kohl, after his coming
into office in 1982 as the new West German Chancellor, urged to revise the German past
7 Viktor Jerofejev, A jó Sztálin [The Good Stalin] (Budapest, Európa: 2005), 121
8 Alexei Miller, “Historical Politics: Eastern European Convolutions in the 21
st Century in ed. Alexei Miller and
Maria Lipman “The Convolutions”, 3
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associated with 1968 and its moral connotations. Many historians got involved in the issue, but
it did not stay a purely academic matter, since all participating historians had a political
agenda.9 The battle of German historians led to new perspectives in academic researches and
historians began to study how “history politics use scholarliness to legitimate and delegitimate
particular political positions which are being debated because of their wider relevance to
society.”10
The German debate was not the only case, but historical politics mushroomed among
the political strategies of Eastern European countries and played an important role in
strengthening patriotism. According to Alexei Miller, “it represents a new set of practices
concerning the political utilization of history typical only of pluralistic non-Communist
societies.”11
In his book edited by him and Maria Lipman, a group of historians provide an
overview and comprehensive study of the new phenomenon focusing on the political agenda of
different actors which meant individual political leaders and parties as well, institutions, media
and political strategies of various countries.12
Nevertheless, as they admit, although “individual
activists of historical politics also deserve special study, but this topic gets on only fragmentary
treatment in [their] volume.”13
Among others, there is less research on how local actors and
9 Berger, “German History”, 30-36
10 Ibid, 23
11 Miller, “Historical”, 5
12 Alexei Miller and Maria Lipman, “The Convolutions”
13 Miller, “Historical”, 8. Maybe the most telling example of this lack is the famous Jedwabne-case, which was
discussed not only in Miller-Lipman book, but also in other discourses; however, nobody scrutinized local
interpretations and local political usage of the issue in Jedwabne so far. Gabriella Vincze, an MA-student at the
Department of European Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology in the University of Pécs (Hungary) had fieldwork
in Jedwabne in 2012 in order to study the local aspects of the Jedwabne-case. Gabriella Vincze: “Ez már túlmutat a
pajtán…” A történelem aktualizálhatóságának és felhasználhatóságának kérdése a Jedwabne-vita kapcsán [“This Is
Beyond the Barn…” Applicability of History in the Case of Jedwabne-Dispute.] Paper presented at the
conforoence “Borders of Our World” Eötvös Collegium, Budapest, Hungary, 22-24 February 2013
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local institutions contribute to historical politics and how they cooperate with official and state
institutions or on the contrary, how they take a stand against them.14
This absence is especially typical of studies on Russian historical politics, where
scholars discuss the changes of political positions on Russian history, its symbolic and
educational manifestations like the rearrangement of sculptures in Moscow15
or new
textbooks.16
The most unique peculiarity of Russian changes is the intention to create continuity
between the Soviet and Russian past. While most of the postsocialist countries intended to
distance themselves from their socialist past and create a tabula rasa for the new democratic
states and to bridge the gap caused by socialist regimes in civic development, the Russian
Federation aimed at embedding the Soviet past into the wider historical context. This was
essential, because the exclusion of the glorious peak of Soviet history, the great Victory in the
World War II was unimaginable.17
First of all, the memory of the Great Patriotic War creates
continuity not only between the Soviet and Russian past, but obscures ethnic and religious
differences as well, because it delineates the boundaries of the community of Soviet/Russian
peoples in opposition to the enemy. As Elizabeth E. Wood explains “the suffering of the war
can have an effect on each individual person, drawing them into a collective sense of belonging
and redemption. (…) The nation is sacred in its suffering and rebirth, in its role as savior of
Europe from the evils of the barbarian Nazis.”18
That is to say, the war is interpreted as a moral
victory as well. Accordingly, the soldiers who participated in this victory are perceived as
14
Gábor Gyáni deals with the issue of “alternative” histories and second-rate historians’ agency in Hungary. In this
context he mentions local Trianon-monuments supported by local authorities, but he does not unfold entirely the
related local aspects. Gábor Gyáni, “The Memory of Trianon as a Political Instrument in Hungary Today” in:
Alexei Miller and Maria Lipman, “The Convolutions”, 109 15
Benjamin Forest and Juliet Johnson, “Unraveling”, 3 16
Alexei Miller, “The Turns”, 256-263 17
Lev Gudkov, “The Fetters” 18
Elizabeth A. Wood: "Performing”, 175
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heroes by Russian society, but not victims like in other national memories.19
The legacy of the
memory of war heroes provides the concept of Russian patriotism: the proper citizen is loyal to
the motherland and willing to defend it and die for it – that is the way one can be included in
the nation.
Motherland(s)
Barrington, Herron and Silver states in their article: “While national identity may or
may not be based on ethnicity, it always contains a territorial component.”20
Thomas Hylland
Eriksen also emphasizes the territorial aspect, or rather the claim for statehood, which is the
main distinctive feature between nation and ethnic group.21
In his opinion, ethnic identity and
ethnicity are based on contacts with other groups and they can be perceived only through the
experience of ‘otherness’. “It is through contact with others that we discover who we are, and
an ‘isolated ethnic group’ may therefore be compared with the sound of one hand clapping – an
absurdity.”22
Namely, ethnicity is not a feature of a group, but an aspect of the communication
or connection between two or more groups. The core of ethnic identity resides in the
imagination of historical and cultural continuity of the given group, which offers a “feeling of
cultural belongingness and security.”23
Practically, they manifest in common myths and history
of the group, nominal kinship, endogamy and shared traditions.
Compared to the notion of ethnic group, the idea of nation always has territorial
components. In the case of the Soviet Union and minorities living there, this aspect meant the
19
Tatiana Zhurzhenko, “Heroes” 20
Lowell W. Barrington et all, “The Motherland Is Calling: Views of Homeland among Russians in the Near
Abroad” in: World Politics 55:2 (2003), 292 21
Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Etnicitás és nacionalizmus. Antropológiai perspektívák. [Ethnicity and Nationalism.
Anthropological Perspectives] (Budapest – Pécs: Gondolat Kiadó, 2008), 22 22
Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Small Places, Large Issues. An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology.
(London: Pluto, 2001), 263 23
Ibid, 267
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main political playground for the regime. In 1913 Stalin defined the nation as “a historically
constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory,
economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.”24
Stalin
emphasized the territorial determination of the nation to a large extent, an approach which was
manifested in the administrative system of the Soviet Union. Titular nations had the legal right
to own their territory and cherish their culture and traditions in an institutionalized form:
Cultural institutions in the national republics organized the creation, not simply of a
national culture in general, but of one that would contribute to the identity-formation and
ethnic cohesion of the politically designated titular nationality of each republic. In the
realm of culture, the interconnection between the institutional form of the national
republic and the program of nativization and nation-building became most apparent. The
formation of cultural organizations and the organization of cultural practice reflected a
politically inspired operational code of “one republic—one culture” that fit securely
within the institutionalization of the Stalinist troika: one nation—one territory—one
republic. In this sense, the status of “titular nationality” in a national-state administrative
territory provided more than merely a nominal prestige; in fact, such status entitled the
given ethnic community to cultural hegemony within its own territory.25
Due to this ethno-territorial arrangement titular nations had a relatively independent
cultural autonomy; however, the territory of the administrative entities and the areas inhabited
by the ethnic groups did not entirely overlap each other. While the majority of the group
became a titular nation in one republic, the rest was defined as trans-border minority living in
neighboring republics and counties. This arrangement controlled the territorial distribution of
the ethnic groups and thus, their political potency, too and it resulted in two basic peculiarities
of the Soviet nations. On the one hand, a very special nation-image came into being: a political
nation led by an ethnic group, the titular nation. The paradox of this resided in that only a part
of the ethnic group constituted the titular nation, while the rest of the political nation did not
24
Saroyan quoting Stalin. Mark Saroyan, “Beyond the Nation-State: Culture and Ethnic Politics in Soviet
Transcaucasia”, In: Ronald Suny ed. “Nationalism and Social Change”, (University of Michigan Press, 1996), 137 25
Ibid, 138-139
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practice equal rights because of the privileged status of the titular nation. On the other hand, the
administrative structure affected the minority politics as well, in which titular nations were
responsible not only for their own citizens, but also for the trans-border members of their ethnic
group. According to Rogers Brubaker, this aspect is a distinctive feature between nationalizing
and “homeland” states:
Against nationalizing states' characteristic assertion that the status of minorities is a
strictly internal matter, "homeland" states claim that their rights and responsibilities vis-
a-vis ethno-national kin transcend the boundaries of territory and citizenship.
"Homeland," in this sense, is a political, not an ethnographic category. A state becomes
an external national "homeland" when cultural or political elites construe certain
residents and citizens of other states as co-nationals, as fellow members of a single trans-
border nation, and when they assert that this shared nationhood makes the state
responsible, in some sense, not only for its own citizens but also for ethnic co-nationals
who live in other states and possess other citizenships.26
The peculiarity of the entire Soviet system of nationalities is that the system shifted
national character and nationality as the organizer of the social and political order from the
level encompassing the entire state to beneath state level, while the Soviet state was not
formulated as a nation but an international and supranational entity.27
This administrative
legacy of the Russian Federation influences contemporary politics and I will go back to this
question in the next chapter.
The ethnographic or cultural category of homeland is also connected to geographical
territories of the nation, although its imagined boundaries do not always overlap the official
borders of the state. Homeland is a heterogeneous emotional space with intensive points, places
and zones, which show a completely different structure than the homogeneous segment-
26
Rogers Brubaker, “Nationalism Reframed. Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe”
(Cambridge, 2000), 5 27
Ibid, 37-38
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categories of political territory.28
Maybe, one of the most telling examples is Hungary, where
certain radical right movements want to restore the Great, so-called Historical Hungary, that is
to say the borders of the Kingdom of Hungary. In their perception the Hungarian homeland
implies not only the territory of contemporary Hungary, but also the former parts of the
kingdom annexed in 1920. A more gentile form of this homeland-concept was manifested after
the political transition in 1989, when the government initiated national funerary rites called
political reburials. András Zempléni in his article explains how all Hungarian ‘homelandless
dead’ were reburied, namely, the hidden martyrs or exiled patriots, who were considered to be
the victim of the communist regime and died abroad or were buried without funeral. The dead
were recalled from New York, Portugal or even from Austria, however, none of them were
repatriated from Slovakia or from Transylvania, where the imagined Hungarian homeland
extends. What is more, when in 1996 the Slovakian government offered to return the relics of
Prinze Rákóczi, the Hungarians of Slovakia and Hungary refused it: “the prince’s relics should
remain, and do remain where they are, in the sepulchral land of his homeland, even if their
place of worship is not located any more on the present territory of Hungary.”29
In the case of Russia, obviously the state aims at building one nation from a strongly
heterogeneous community. In Russian history – from the Russian Empire up to the present-day
Russian Federation – the creation of a common national identity and loyalty has always been a
crucial point. After the victory of the Great Patriotic War the most important pillars of the
nation-building have been the memory of the war and the concept of Soviet/Russian motherland,
which was personified as Motherland-Mother (Rodina-Mat’) during the war. The word ‘rodina’
28
András, Zempléni: Political Reburials. Academic course, Department of European Ethnology and Cultural
Anthropology, University of Pécs, Hungary. 2007-2008/Spring semester 29
András Zempléni, “Sepulchral Land and Territory of the Nation: Reburial Rituals in Contemporary Hungary” in:
András A. Gergely ed., A nemzet antropológiája [The Anthropology of Nation] (Budapest, Új Mandátum, 2002),
76-77
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derives from the verb ‘rodit’, to give birth. Both of them have the same stem ‘rod’, which
means clan or kinship, accordingly, Rodina implies social and genealogical connotations as
well (unlike the Hungarian Haza, which is associated only with dwelling-place because it goes
back to the word ‘ház’, house). Moreover, the gender of the word is feminine, as her visual
manifestation, Motherland-Mother also shows. The complementary word of Rodina is
‘otechestvo’, fatherland, which are included in the Russian name of the Great Patriotic War:
Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna. It is interesting how these expressions engender certain
national symbols and project social roles onto categories related to the nation; while
Motherland is a female who has to be protected, the war and the defense itself are articulated in
the masculine aspect. Therefore, in this paper Motherland or Rodina always refer to the
feminine version, Fatherland does to the masculine one, and homeland is used in broader
contexts.
Malaya Rodina, namely Little Motherland, expresses her inclusion in the greater
Motherland. It is used as a synonym for moya zemlya (my land), krai, rodnoi krai as well as the
districts (raion). It is difficult to give an accurate translation of the word ‘krai’, because it
includes many synonyms of the meaning. First of all it refers to geographical and relatively
small (or smaller) territory like region, land, area with natural borders. Secondly, it can be
meant the border itself or the edge of a given region, to which the name of Ukraina deriving
from the expression of ‘u krayu’, at the borders, refers. Finally, ‘krai’ indicates administrative
territories as well – while from the end of XVIII. century up to the beginning of XX. century
krai was an official or semi-official administrative unity including gubernias (provinces) like
Kavkazskii or Turkestanskii Krai; in the contemporary Russian Federation it denotes smaller
administrative subjects like Altai Krai, Perm Krai or Kamchatka Krai.
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‘Rodnoi krai’ is a more specific term – it is used for native land, where somebody was
born, however, it does not include obvious borders of the territory. When I asked my
informants about the meaning of ‘krai’ and ‘rodnoi krai’, they often mentioned their villages,
their districts or Bashkiria itself. Seeing my incomprehension, one of them summed it with the
expression of Malaya Rodina; that is Little Motherland. This comment and the multivocal
meaning of these words highlight a very important aspect of them: the inclusion of a small part
into the larger and larger whole growing gradually.
The expressions Malaya Rodina and rodnoi krai usually refer to locality and local
identity, that is to say, village and district. Therefore the term ‘local’ used in this thesis is
considered to be their synonym and its usage is not limited to any of them as the Russian
expressions also implies more levels of locality. However, I am going to specify the meaning
when necessary. Although these words might express Bashkortostan as well, I am going to
differentiate the republic level from locality in order to avoid misunderstandings.
The History of Kraevedenie
The field of kraevedenie focuses on the knowledge of rodnoi krai or Malaya Rodina,
which are connected to geographic or administrative categories, but not ethnic or national
territories. Kraevedenie is a field of study, which includes the research, preservation and
transmission to younger generations of the lore of local communities. It is not reduced to
history of villages, but it implies the local knowledge of all spheres of life like geography,
biology, archeology, ethno-history, history of the local economy, etc. This colorful content of
kraevedenie has been shaped for centuries from the Russian Empire till nowadays and its
history is intertwined constantly with educational aspects as well.
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The interest in geography and mineralogy was the first trigger of the study of small
regions in the 18th
century. In 1761 Mikhail Lomonosov, the famous Russian writer and
scientist, had intended to map the mineral sources of the entire empire and involve local people
in his research. Lomonosov sent questionnaires consisted of thirty questions all over the
Russian Empire, which included information about villages, cities, districts, counties and
provinces. Schools became primary places of the research, where students and teachers studied
local and regional geography together. At the end of the 18th
century the field still concentrated
mainly on geography, but it was extended to other study-areas such as demography, trade,
agriculture and cultural traditions. In the 19th
century it received an institutional background by
the foundation of the Russian Geographical Society, which initiated a new movement called
otechestvovedenie (deriving from the word ‘otechestvo’, fatherland) or rodinovedenie (deriving
from the word ‘rodina’, motherland). The essential idea of this movement was the education of
basic geographical concepts through direct observation of the surrounding environment and
nature. They published textbooks and methodological papers in order to facilitate the teachers’
work in elementary schools in the countryside as well. In the second half of the 19th
century
otechestvovedenie developed spontaneously and not only teachers, but also local priests became
experts of this field. 30
At the beginning of the 20th
century the field of local and regional geography was still
flourishing. Before the Great October Socialist Revolution there were 160 local history and
geography societies with 15 million members, by the end of 1922 there were 516 organizations
including 285 museums. In 1927, there were already 1,765 societies and 560 museums. In 1922
the Central Bureau of Kraevedenie was founded in the Russian Academy of Sciences, which
30
K. F. Stroev, Kraevedenie,(Moskva, 1974) 14-34; source: http://kraevedenie.chat.ru/stroev/stroev2.htm, 27-05-
2013
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supported the foundation of several museums.31
In the 1930s organizations of kraevedenie
became more and more problematic for the Soviet regime. The experts of the field were always
on the side of the cultural and economic diversity and therefore they did not agree with the
unification and centralization of the economy. That is to say, their work was considered to be a
barrier to the Soviet planned economy and kolkhozation and it was necessary to take control
over their agency. Museums were closed, a number of specialists were exiled or executed and
their field was in turn entirely reformed according to the new Soviet interest.32
The fundament of the Soviet kraevedenie consisted of local revolutionary movements
and the history of local industry and agriculture, especially the history of kolkhoz. It was turned
into an official Soviet science with a strong political and ideological background. As one of the
articles in Pravda said:
Study your land, your region, its history, its richness in order to know what hide in the
depths of his native land, to discover the nature. Not only study it, but learn how to use it
for the benefit of man, for the benefit of socialist society. What a noble and grateful
occupation, what a powerful source of knowledge, what a great educational tool of the
youth! Its name is kraevedenie.33
After the victory over Germany in World War II, kraevedenie was completed with the
local memory of the Great Patriotic War. In the 1960s associations of veterans, local
organizations of the Komsomol and the Pioneer Movement began to participate in researches
related to kraevedenie to a larger and larger extent. The first initiation was the All-Union
Hiking Tours of Places of Military Glory by the so-called “Red Pathfinders” in 1965, which
became a mass-movement during the year of the fiftieth Anniversary of the Revolution. More
31
Zolotoe desyatiletie kraevedeniya (Golden decade of kraevedenie), source: http://cribs.me/kraevedenie/zolotoe-
desyatiletie-kraevedeniya; accessed: 27-05-2013 32
Sovetskoe kraevedenie (1917-1989) ili istoriya s geografiey (Soviet kraevedenie or history with geography),
source: http://vlvzverev.narod.ru/index/0-12, accessed: 27-05-2013 33
‘Zolotoe”, http://cribs.me/kraevedenie/zolotoe-desyatiletie-kraevedeniya
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than thirty million young people took part in hiking tours organized by the Komsomol, the
Voluntary Society for Assisting the Armed Forces, the political departments of army units and
by activists of the Defense Society. During the tours participants visited all the “places of
military glory” of a given region; they collected relics and documents of soldiers, made
interviews with eyewitnesses. Sometimes, due to their thorough work, they could reconstruct
the course of a battle or identify soldiers and they created small museums and obelisks of
military glory. “Evenings of Military Glory” were a more analytical activity. In the framework
of these thematical evenings veterans and fighters imparted their war-experiences to younger
generations and they facilitated “the instrumental activity of uncovering the details of one
aspect of the heroic past by various kinds of documentation, such as eyewitness reports, film
clips, lectures and relevant music.”34
The students could represent the results of their research
and their knowledge during the All-Union competitions called Summer Lightning or Eaglet.
Due to these movements and the memory of the Great Patriotic War the idea of patriotism and
heroism became integral parts of education of kraevedenie.
As results of these consistent researches more and more local museums were founded.
In Tatyshly district, where school-museums examined in the present thesis are located, the first
museum came into being in 1976, the second in 1981 and others after the dissolution of the
Soviet Union in 1991. After 2000 they especially mushroomed not only in the district, but in
Bashkortostan as well. The process has been connected to the new federal programs called
Patriotic Upbringing of the Citizens of the Russian Federation, which has had three five-year
programs in 2001-2005, 2006-2010 and 2011-2015. The program has aimed at improving the
34
Christel Lane, The Rites of Rulers. Ritual in Industrial Society – The Soviet Case. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1981) 148-150
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patriotic upbringing of younger generations, which had a crisis during the entire 1990s.35
As
Ovchinnikova and Ul’yanovna discussed the essence of the program:
To be a patriot means to serve the motherland, to work for the country’s benefit, to
enhance its glory, and if necessary to sacrifice one’s personal wealth, prosperity, and,
under extreme conditions (in a time of war) one’s life. This is a truth that is eternal. Now,
in the first years of the twenty-first century, bringing up the kind of person who is a
citizen and a patriot is the priority task of the system of education. Today, patriotism is
identified with qualities of personality such as one’s love for one’s motherland as well as
one’s home region, one’s readiness to fulfill one’s constitutional duty, and one’s sense of
social tolerance, including national and religious tolerance. Present-day pedagogical
science looks at patriotic upbringing as a component of the complex and comprehensive
process of the shaping of the personality.36
School-museums and kraevedenie-classes are integral parts of civic patriotic upbringing,
because they transmit values mentioned in the quotation through the study of the past and
Rossiyskiy37
history. That is to say, museums and their work have a strong ideological
background and they represent the official national history and historical concepts. In the 1980s,
the theory of museumisation had a paradigm shift connected to the postmodern turn in
humanities and social sciences. Since then, the museum is considered to be, on the one hand, a
cultural representation reflecting certain cultural aspects of the social life and on the other hand,
a constructed text, which can be read and analyzed as a narrative.38
The museum became the
subject of observation especially as a representative space of science, politics and their
relationship.
After the political transition in Eastern Europe, the new museology has proved to be a
very applicable and useful method in the analysis of rearranged museums and monuments in
postsocialist states. As I mentioned above, monuments and museums in the Russian Federation
35
N.P Ovchinnikova – N.S. Ul’yanovna, “Problems of the Patriotic Upbringing of Rural School Students”,
Russian Education and Society, 52:3: 73 36
Ibid, 72-73 37
The term ‘Rossiiskii’ is based on citizenship and used all citizens of the Russian Federation regardless to their
ethnic belonging, while the word ‘russkii’ refers to Russian as an ethnic category. 38
Frazon Zsófia, Múzeum, 11
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have been crucial parts of the representation of the reinterpreted history, which is supposed to
create historical continuity between the Soviet and Russian past.39
However, not only the state-
museums, but also the discussed school-museums are excellent examples of these processes.
Therefore, in this thesis I analyze three school-museums as narratives, elements of which are
constructed in order, following certain concepts and ideas affected by local actors,
organizations, the actors of republican or state-institutions.
39
Cf.: Forest-Johnson, “Unraveling”
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A Flower with Seven Petals
In the present chapter I am going to discuss the issue of multiethnicity and minority-
policy after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in Bashkortostan in order to see which political
circumstances have affected the Udmurt revival and ethnic identity-policy. I discuss the
educational aspects of the changes, too, which facilitated and provided institutional background
for school-museums and kraevedenie-classes.
In this chapter I am going to process inwards and firstly discuss the republic, secondly
the Udmurts and finally the district as well. I intend to describe the general picture of the every-
day life in Tatyshly district and provide some additional details about it in order to highlight the
texture of the very field and thus further the imagining of social contexts of the observed
phenomenon.
Political contexts in the contemporary Republic of Bashkortostan
Bashkortostan is located between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains and bounded
by the Republic of Tatarstan, Udmurt Republic, Perm Krai as well as Sverdlosk, Chelyabinsk
and Orenburg Oblast. Its total area is 143,600 km² divided into fifty-four districts and the
capital of the republic is Ufa. According to the 2010 census, the population is 4,072,292 people,
of which ethnic composition is very heterogeneous40
: Russian (36%), Bashkir (29,5%), Tatar
(24,5%) Chuvash (2,7%), Mari (2,6%), Ukrainian (1%), Mordvin (0,5%) Udmurt (0,5%) and
others (2,7%) inhabit the republic.
40
Religious composition: Muslim (38%), Russian Orthodox (25%), Atheist (8%), Other (14% - Krishna believers,
Baptist, other Orthodox, etc.) A separate category in the survey those people, who believe in God, but did not
confess any official religion; they are 15% of the population. Source: Arena, Atlas religiy i natsional’nostey Rossii
[Atlas of religions and nationalities of Russia] http://sreda.org/arena, , accessed 26-03-2013
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1.) The location of Bashkortostan in the Russian Federation
41
It is important to bear in mind that census-data usually does not precisely reflect reality.
The results of the 2010 census were rooted in the data of the 2002 census, in the course of
which the Bashkir political elite’s unconcealed aim was the reversal of Tatar and Bashkir ratio
in the population.42
According to the previous census in 1989, the ethnic composition had a
different picture, which affected to a large extent the unsuccessful separatist claims of
Bashkortostan after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The majority of the population was
Russian (39%), in the second place stood Tatars (28,5%) and Bashkirs were only the third
biggest ethnic group in their own republic (22%). This encouraged the Tatars to initiate a strong
ethnic revival movement in Bashkortostan, who wanted to make the Tatar language an official
language. The movement was unsuccessful, only Bashkir and Russian languages became
recognized as official state languages in the constitution, but in response a law was passed,
giving cultural autonomy to ethnic groups. Nevertheless, the Bashkir political elite intended to
41
Source: Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia, article: Bashkortostan; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashkortostan,
accessed: 21-05-2013 42
“Isskustvennaya respublika, fal’shivaya perepis’.” Ufimskiy Zhurnal. [Artificial Republic, False Census. Ufa
Journal] Published: 19-12-2011 http://journalufa.com/2204-iskusstvennaya-respublika-falshivaya-perepis.html,
accessed: 2012-01-18
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find a solution to increase the Bashkir population and their political potential. In the next census
the manipulation of ethnic identity was based on the high degree of similarity of the two
languages and cultures and it aimed mainly at the Tatar-speaking Bashkirs living in North-
Western areas of the republic.
The process of Bashkirisation appeared in many spheres of life in the 1990s, especially
to economic and political context, about which Dmitriy Gorenburg provides a very
comprehensive overview in his works. In Tatarstan separatist ambitions were based primarily
on the ethnic majority of Tatars,43
while the case of Bashkirs was more complicated due to the
presence of a Russian and Tatar majority in Bashkortostan. Thus, since the independence of
Bashkortostan could not be established on ethnic grounds, ethnic claims disappeared from
political rhetoric. Instead, Bashkortostan tried to maintain and strengthen its relative
independence from Russia through its strong economy and industry, which permitted a high
degree of economic self-sufficiency that, could be used to press for sovereignty. Oil extraction
and refining, coal and heavy industry enabled the republic to maintain a positive financial
balance with the Russian central government. The economic reinforcement provided
opportunities not only for the republic, but also for Bashkirs. They got into a privileged
situation considering especially the sphere of economy and employment:
The south-eastern regions of the republic, where the Bashkir population is concentrated,
have received development credits, and the bulk of foreign investment projects have
been located there. (…) The program for Bashkir development calls for expanding the
43
Tatarstan also emphasized its strong economy, industry, it wanted to fully control these fields, but the main
argument for sovereignty was the ethnic majority of Tatars bolstered by a historical rhetoric recalling their past
political glory. It resulted in the direct promotion of Tatar culture and dissemination of Tatar folklore, laws for the
development of Tatar education and the usage of Tatar language in offices, public spaces and schools. „The plan
provides for mandatory Tatar language instruction for Russian children. (…) This provision requires that Russian
and Tatar be studied in equal measure in all schools and kindergartens in Tatarstan.” That is why nowadays
Tatarstan is considered to be „the most nationalistic” republic and the Tatar ethnic-movement and nation-building
is a sort of ideal for other titular nations living in the Russian Federation. Dmitriy Gorenburg, “Regional
Separatism in Russia: Ethnic Mobilization or Power Grab?” Europe-Asia Studies. 51:2 (1999): 262
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socio-economic infrastructure of Bashkir-populated regions, giving preferences to
Bashkirs (…) in all spheres of employment.44
Meanwhile, the Janus-faced Bashkir political elite communicated a completely different
concept of the nation of Bashkortostan; it is the multiethnic45
political nation, of which cultural
diversity is deemed to be a national value of the republic. A multiethnic nation seemed to be
more comparable to the Rossiiskii nation as well, which based the symbolic integration of
Bashkortostan into the Russian Federation. As Halyaf Ishmuratov, Minister of Culture and
Nationalities Policy (1994-1995, 2001-2005) wrote:
For all its multi-ethnic and multi-religious character, Bashkortostan is, as before,
relatively stable ethno-politically. The accumulated experience of interethnic harmony
may be of interest of other regions in Russia. Its components are a dialogue that
national-cultural societies maintain with the state and among themselves, efforts to
create favorable conditions for the development of cultural diversity, a policy to
preserve languages and cultures, and other things. All of that can be described by the
common term “tolerance”. In this connection, we see as symbolic what President
Vladimir Putin of Russia said during one of his visits to the Republic: “…All of Russia
is reflected in Bashkortostan like in a drop of water.”
The ideas of tolerance at this stage in development should become the decisive
factor in interethnic cooperation in Russia and the main principle of interethnic
intercourse in the Russian space as it gets integrated in the world community.46
Nevertheless, the leading role of Bashkirs is also articulated in his propagandistic paper:
A culture for interaction between Russians, Bashkirs, Tatars, Udmurts, Maris and
Chuvashes and others took shape in Bashkortostan over centuries. Thus the Bashkirs
emerged as a unique nation oriented to the peaceful solution of interaction problems.47
44
Ibid: 264-265 45
The Russian term of multiethnicity, ‘mnogonatsionalnost’, implies the word nationality instead of ethnos. This
preference is based on different traditions of terminology in the Russian social sciences. As Vladimir Zorin,
professor of the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences said, the well-
known term ‘ethnos’ used and spread among Soviet scholars by Yulian V. Bromley has been displaced by terms of
‘narod’ (people) and ‘nacionalnost’ (nationality). According to Zorin, it is due to the work of Valeriy Tishkov,
director of the Institute, who is engaged in research of ethnicity in the contemporary Russian Federation and
prefers these terms. (Vladimir Zorin, State National Politics in the Russian Federation: New Proposals and
Decisions. Paper presented in the Institute of Ethnology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary 13-
12-2011) 46
Halyaf Ishmuratov, “Following Ancestors’ Behests” International Affairs (2005, No 1.: 144-152): 146 47
Ibid.
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The new concept of nation and the ambiguity of its interpretation were manifested in
national symbols as well. The national flag of Little Bashkiria was constructed in 1918 and
used till 1924 when it was replaced by the red state flag of Bashkir Autonomous Soviet
Socialist Republic with an image in the upper corner of a gold sickle and hammer, and under
them a red five-finger star with a gold border. Until this moment the Bashkir flag had three
isometric horizontal stripes — of blue, green and white. The dark blue color meant Bashkir
belonging to the Turk group of peoples, the green stripe was a symbol of adherence of Bashkir
people to Islam, and the white color was the sign of peace, prosperity and happiness of the
people of Bashkortostan.48
After having the red flag almost for seventy years, in 1992 the new
Republic of Bashkortostan confirmed a new state flag. Although its colors are the same as those
of the former Bashkir flag, the order of the colors and their meanings are changed. The dark
blue color today means a clarity, goodwill and cleanness of thoughts of the people of the
republic; white is the peaceful nature, openness, readiness for mutual cooperation; green is the
symbol of freedom and eternity of life. The flag is completed by a new symbol located in the
center of the white stripe, the kurai flower. The famous Bashkir flute, which is also called kurai,
is made of the stem of this plant, but the state symbol consists of only the flower and its seven
petals. The petals represent the seven main nationalities living in Bashkortostan, namely,
Russians, Bashkirs, Tatars, Maris, Chuvashes, Udmurts and Mordvas.49
48
450 years with Russia! Official website devoted to the celebration of the 450-anniversary of Bashkiria free-will
joining the Russian state. http://www.bashkortostan450.ru/authorities/symbolics/flag.html, accessed: 27-03-2013 49
Ishmuratov, “Following”, 145
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2.) Flag of Little Bashkiriya, 1918-1922
50 3.) Flag of Republic of Bashkortostan, 1992
51
While the reinterpretation of the national flag reflects the new concept of the political
nation of Bashkortostan and the idea of multiethnicity draws a parallel between the republic and
the Russian Federation, the coat of arms communicates a different nation-concept. Although it
includes the colors of the national flag and the kurai as well, the figure of Salavat Yulaev
dominates the whole symbol. Salavat Yulaev, the Bashkir hero, who was the head of the
revolting Bashkir peasants in the rebellion in 1773-1775, joined the revolted troops of
Yemelian Pugachev, who led an uprising against the reign of Catherine II, her reforms and
suppression, and aimed at abolishing the controlling tsarist power. The monument to Salavat
Yulaev was erected in 1967, whose stylized image became the coat of arms of Bashkortostan in
1993. Thus, the state symbols has dissonancy, because while the national flag symbolizes the
ideas of multi-ethnic harmony and the national anthem emphasizes unity with Russia (“We are
united with Russia”), the coat of arms and Salavat Yulaev as a national hero have the implicit
meaning of freedom, the fight against suppression and ruling power.
50
Source: Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia, Russian version, article: Flag Bashkortostana (Flag of
Bashkortostan);
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B3_%D0%91%D0%B0%D1%88%D0%BA%D
0%BE%D1%80%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B0, accessed: 21-05-2013 51
Source: Official website of Republic of Bashkortostan; http://bashkortostan.ru/republic/state_symbols.php;
accessed: 21-05-2013
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4.) Monument of Salavat Yulaev, Ufa
52 5.) Coat of Arms of Bashkortostan
53
As the most elemental concept of Bashkir autonomy is manifested in the economy,
politics and state symbols, national education also played an important role in the sovereignty
project of Bashkortostan in the 1990s. Reforms included the republicanisation of the former
branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences located in Ufa, which was declared the Academy
of Sciences of the Republic of Bashkortostan. A new educational publishing house called Kitap
(the Bashkir word for book) was opened in Ufa, and in 1997 the Ministry of Education created
a new institute to design textbooks for Bashkortostan's schools. In the academic year 1990/91 a
new subject, the 'History, Literature and Culture of Bashkortostan', was introduced in 35 class
hours a year for all levels, which means one class per week. Basically, the entire system of
education was reformed in accordance with the Bashkir separatist claims.54
The most important project of this reform was the Celebration of Family-Tree (Шежере
Байрамы; Sezhere Bairamy), according to which all schools and kindergartens had to involve
52
Photographs in the present thesis are taken by me in the periods of August 2008, October 2011, April-July 2012 53
Source: Official site of Republic of Bashkortostan; http://bashkortostan.ru/republic/state_symbols.php; accessed:
21-05-2013 54
Katherine E. Graney, “Education Reform in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan: Sovereignty Projects in Post-Soviet
Russia” Europe-Asia Studies 51:4 (1999): 616
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the method of genealogical-tree research in the curricula and encourage students to keep
searching and studying their roots. Although the program was obligatory for every institution,
as an originally Bashkir tradition, the family-tree making was most important in the
transmission of Bashkir culture and ethnic identity. For this purpose ethnic belonging of every
member of the family has to be indicated. Libraries received financial support for creating
centers of family-tree research inside the libraries, where people can study the history of their
family and use computer-programs to elaborate their own family-trees.
6.) The research-center of family-tree in Verkhnie Tatyshly Library
In villages the official Day of the Family-Tree was celebrated in club-houses, where some
families gathered and displayed their family-tree to the audience. After the celebration every
family-tree was exhibited in the school-museums and became integral part of kraevedenie-
classes. This initiation strengthened not only the Bashkir national identity, but also others,
because due to the visual map of kinship, people found common relatives and discovered new
family ties among themselves.
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The Janus-face of the Bashkir politics was manifested in the new concept of education,
which was situated in a multicultural context as well. On the one hand, the new educational
projects aimed at shaping the civic mindedness of students with the help of teaching about the
constitution of Bashkortostan and the official state symbols of sovereign Bashkortostan.
Moreover, a special program has been developed to help teachers to achieve these goals, which
includes such events as 'Republic Day' and activities organised around the theme 'I am a citizen
of my Republic'. On the other hand, the curricula of the new subject, the 'History, Literature and
Culture of Bashkortostan' focuses on the cultural and historical legacy of Bashkirs and
textbooks barely mention other ethnic groups living in Bashkortostan.55
In the educational project these minorities have had the possibility to transmit their
knowledge based on ethno-history, literature and culture only in the framework of new federal
educational reforms, namely in the so-called local component:
The [Federal] Law on Education delegated to the regions greater responsibility for
curricula and schools as part of a broader political effort to break up the centralized
Soviet Communist state. The ministry has decided that 60 per cent of the school
curriculum should be set at the center, 30 per cent by regional authorities, and 10 per
cent by local schools.56
Although the local component intended to strengthen local identity, ethnic groups found
some space in it to express their traditions and lore in school-museums and facultative
kraevedenie-classes. Sometimes, teachers explain local or ethnic parallels of the given theme in
history-classes, connotations and contexts of certain historical events like the Great Patriotic
War. Moreover, textbooks also encourage teachers and students to broaden their knowledge on
local history and they include tasks and questions related directly to the students’ family
55
Ibid., 624 56
Janet G. Vaillant, “Civic Education in a Changing Russia”, In Educational Reform in Post-Soviet Russia, ed.
Ben Eklof et al. (London: Frank Cass, 2005), 235.
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histories and the history of their towns or villages.57
Thus, personal, local, ethnic and national
memories are intertwined continuously.
Genuine Udmurts – Trans-Kama Udmurts in Bashkortostan
The new forums of education have a special role not only in patriotic upbringing, but
also in creating the ethnic consciousness of students. In Udmurt school-museums, the
ethnography of the far past and the contemporary ethnic revival are also represented; however
the continuity of ethno-history is broken by displays of Soviet times in the framework of
kolkhoz-, school- and war-history. Although the Soviet regime supported ethnic culture and
folklore, it did not tolerate religions. In turn, the essence of Trans-Kama Udmurt identity has
been religious for centuries.
According to verbal folklore, Udmurts living in Bashkortostan had fled from the forced
Christianization and settled among Muslim peoples in Southern territories, over the Kama River
– this is why they are called Trans-Kama Udmurts. Muslims did not have to convert to
Christianity; therefore Udmurts adopted their names in order to deceive missionaries and tax-
gatherers and thus, they could keep and practice their pagan sacrifices in the course of time. For
this reason they consider themselves genuine Udmurts compared to Udmurts living in the
Udmurt Republic, who left their original Udmurt religion and became Orthodox. Scholars
partly share this ethnic concept of origin, but they usually complete it with economic and social
factors as well, which contributed to the Udmurt migration in the 18th
century.58
Nevertheless,
the most important aftermath of the migration undoubtedly was the preservation of Udmurt
57
Vera Kaplan, “History Teaching in Post-Soviet Russia: Coping with Antithetical Traditions”, In Educational
Reform in Post-Soviet Russia, ed. Ben Eklof et al. (London: Frank Cass, 2005), 261. 58
Tatiana Minniyakhmetova, Kalendarnye obryady zakamskikh udmurtov. [Ritual Calendar of Trans-Kama
Udmurts] (Izhevsk: RAN, 2000)
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animist faith, which was practiced secretly even in Soviet times and after the dissolution it
became the most vivid ethnic identity marker of Trans-Kama Udmurts.
The ethnic revival was initiated and organized by a very charismatic Udmurt leader,
Renat Biktimirovich Galyamshin, who searched for Udmurts in Bashkortostan and listed all
villages. 59
It was essential in the revival, because Udmurts living in neighboring districts did
not know each other earlier. Galyamshin as a talented agronomist led the local kolkhoz60
and
later became the head of one of the rural settlements in Tatyshly district. He has had all political
and social capital to facilitate and ensure opportunities “to flourish the Udmurt faith”61
and he
took advantage of the changed political context in Bashkortostan. Accordingly, all political and
economic power is concentrated in his hands among Udmurts, therefore he is considered to be
their main leader.
In the framework of the official multiethnic policy, Udmurts received institutionalized
opportunities to declare their ethnic identity, practice their ethnic religion and cherish their
language and traditions. Firstly the Udmurt National-Cultural Center (NKC) was founded by
Galyamshin in 1996. The center is located in the so-called “Udmurt capital” of Bashkortostan,
in Novye Tatyshly and cooperates with the Historical-Cultural Center of Udmurts (IKC). IKC
was set up in 2004, as a branch of the House of Friendship of Peoples founded in 1995 for the
support of multicultural traditions. The differences between the two institutions are based on
financial and institutional backgrounds; while the workers of IKC get their salary from the state
and their programs are covered by the state-budget, colleagues in NKC are volunteers and seek
sponsors constantly in order to organize the renewed sacrifices during the year. These
59
Udmurts live in eight districts in the North-Western part of Bashkortostan. 60
He was the president of the local kolkhoz till 2010, when his son took over the leadership. Meanwhile,
Galyamshin introduced his son into the control-mechanism of Udmurt institutions and his social network, too;
accordingly, probably he will continue his father’s work in other spheres as well. 61
Interview with Renat B. Galyamshin, 11.08.2008., Novye Tatyshly
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differences have permitted a constructive cooperation with a steady financial background and
facilitated projects like the building of Udmurt worship-houses. Although Udmurt sacrifices
always happen in open-air groves and people never use these church-like houses for sacrifices,
these buildings made Udmurt religion more visible in the landscape, which was dominated by
Muslim mosques before.
The ethnic revival is manifested not only in religious gatherings, but also in the ethnic
media. The Udmurt newspaper, Oshmes (Spring), had its first number in 1999 due to
Galyamshin’s initiation and it is the official state newspaper of Udmurts living in Bashkortostan.
It has an electronic version sent via e-mails to readers who moved to other regions of Russia.
The journalists constantly propagate Oshmes among Udmurts – during my fieldwork they
visited a village and went house by house to collect readers, and later they started to organize
cultural evenings with concerts and folk groups for Udmurts living in the Permskiy Kray in
order to advertise the newspaper.
Without the organized communication, contacts and institutalization of Udmurt
traditions the Udmurt ethnic revival would not have been carried out. The ethnic nurturing of
new generations intends to ensure the continuity of this process; therefore the centers organize a
number of children programs like folksong contests, folkdance groups and folklore events. The
most famous program for children is a camp called Town of Masters, where Udmurt children
from Bashkortostan and from neighboring territories as well (Udmurtia, Perm, Tatarstan) can
participate. In the camp children can learn several kinds of traditional handicrafts, folk songs
and dances, but what is more important, they make acquaintances with other Udmurts. 62
62
The so-called VKontakte, the Russian version of Facebook functions as a main tool of keeping contact among
children or organizing ethnic events.
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Udmurt traditions and history appear in school-museums and kraevedenie-classes as
well, which strengthen the ethnic identity of children; however, classes focus on knowledge
related to locality. It is important to bear in mind that different identity-levels (local, ethnic,
republican or federal) do not exclude each other, but rather overlap. The district-identity is
important as much as ethnic identity and it is considered to be the fundamental basis of Malaya
Rodina. In order to understand more deeply the issue discussed in my paper, I am going to give
a general overview of Tatyshly district in the next part.
Tatyshly District – The Texture of the Field
Tatyshly district is located on the northernmost part of Bashkortostan and it is the
smallest one among fifty-four districts of the republic. Its territory is 1376 km², of which more
than 54% is agricultural territory consisting of 81% ploughed fields, 2% hay fields and 17%
pastures. So, as can be seen, the living is based on agriculture primarily, but many people have
oil rig jobs in Siberia and they work there in fortnight-shifts. Besides, every household has a
smaller or bigger allotment, where they grow vegetables (potato, cabbage, beetroot, carrot,
tomato, pepper, dill, etc.) and raise animals like cows, pigs, sheep and poultry.
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7.) The location of Tatyshly district in Bashkortostan
63 8.) Tatyshly district
64
There are seventy-eight villages in thirteen rural settlements of the district and the
distance between villages is about ten kilometers on the road. Only one highway goes across
the district, which connects the district-center, Verkhnie Tatyshly with the Permskii Krai and
the centers of the neighboring districts. Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan is located 220
kilometers from Verkhnie Tatyshly.
The inhabitants are 23,873 and the population-density is approximately 17 people per
km². In the center approximately five thousand people dwell and the population of villages is
around 300-500. It is difficult to define precisely the ethnic composition, because while
according official data 70% of the population is Bashkir and 5,5% is Tatar, the people labeled
by the ethnonym ‘Bashkir’ call themselves Tatars or Bashkirs speaking Tatar.65
More than 21%
63
Source: Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia; Russian version, article: Tatyshlinskiy rayon (Tatyshly district);
http://ru.wikipedia.org/; accessed: 21-05-2013 64
Source: Bashkiriya Turistskaya (Tourist Bashkiriya); http://bashturist.ru/maps/sity/details.php?image_id=400;
accessed: 21-05-2013 65
My paper does not focus on this question, to this issue see: Dmitriy Gorenburg, “Identity Change in
Bashkortostan: Tatars into Bashkirs and Back”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22:3 (1999): 554-580; Dmitriy
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of the district population is Udmurt, therefore it is deemed to be “the most Udmurt” district in
the republic.
The language usage depends on different circumstances. In schools66
the education is
based on Russian and children have five Russian classes per week. Bashkir and English are
mandatory languages and students can learn their native language in two classes per week.
Nevertheless, the first spoken language is always the mother-tongue – Udmurt or Tatar –, at
home every family communicates in their own language. Besides, Tatars comprehend Udmurt
more or less, but they just rarely speak the language itself. Moreover, because Udmurts living
in Bashkortostan have a very special dialect, even if Tatars understand this dialect, they cannot
read the Udmurt newspaper, because it is written in literary Udmurt.67
Udmurts always learn
Tatar as well, because they have to use it on public transport, offices and institutions, because
Tatars are in majority in the district. At the same time, Udmurt can be very useful when they do
not want Tatars to understand their conversations. Of course, everybody knows Russian,
because it is the language of education, the official language of the Russian Federation and a
common language among different ethnic groups. Although Bashkir is mandatory in schools
and official state language, only a few people speak it in everyday life. Tatars can read and
speak Bashkir, because the two languages stand very close to each other, but Udmurts have
difficulties acquiring Bashkir knowledge.
Due to the linguistic diversity, the languages of the local media are also multiple. There
are three newspapers having editorial offices in Verhnie Tatyshly and each of them is written in
Gorenburg: Tatar Identity: A United Indivisible Nation? accessed: 03-04-2013,
http://www.scribd.com/doc/130618530/Tatar-Identity-A-United-Indivisible-Nation-Dmitry-Gorenburg-Harvard-
University-July-19-2004-pdf, 66
There are fifty-three schools in the district including sixteen secondary schools, twenty-six libraries, fifty-one
clubhouses. 67
Udmurts from Udmurtia have jokes on this dialect – they often say that even they do not understand Udmurts
from Bashkortostan. Nevertheless, Udmurts in Bashkortostan have fewer problems with literary language except
for some misunderstandings.
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different languages. The Tatyshly Herald – the official newspaper of the district – has two
versions: a Russian one (Татышлинский Вестник; Tatyshlinskiy Vestnik) and a Tatar one
(Тәтешле хәбәрләре; Täteshle khäbärläre), which were founded in 1935, in the same year,
when the district itself was organized. The third one is the Udmurt Oshmes.
The journalists and correspondents fill mandatory topics assigned by the Ministry of
Mass Media with their articles on local or ethnic issues and news; therefore they play a very
important role in the field of kraevedenie (local historians). Kraeveds also publish in
newspapers and some of these articles can be found in museum-exhibitions as well. Because the
kraevedenie of Tatyshly district has not been published in a summarizing book, the main
sources are these articles written by them in the local media. These articles are collected by
local librarians and kept in thematic folders in the library. These materials are considered to be
kraevedenie of Tatyshly district. There are several folders: History of Tatyshly District; History
of Verkhnie Tatyshly; We and Nature, Nature and Ecology of Bashkortostan; Family – Pillar of
Happiness; Afghanistan; Chechen Tragedy; Our Fellows in the Great Patriotic War, etc. These
folders usually include articles from Tatyshly Herald or state-newspapers written in Russian or
Bashkir language, but Udmurt articles from Oshmes cannot be found among them. This can be
explained by practical reasons – librarians working in the library of the district center are Tatars,
who have difficulties to read and understand the literary Udmurt language. Therefore, Udmurts
collect articles in their centers, for example in the Udmurt Historic-Cultural Center or in the
library of Novye Tatyshly, the so-called Udmurt capital of Bashkortostan.
Novye Tatyshly (its Udmurt name is Vylgurt, which means ‘new village’) is the non-
official center of Udmurts. The inhabitants are around 500-600. The village is located ten
kilometers from the district-center, so many people from the village work there. 80-85% of the
inhabitants are Udmurt and the rest is Tatar. The ethnic composition of the village can be seen
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in the landscape and the structure of the space as well: the Udmurt worship-house is located on
the one side of the village, while the Muslim mosque is placed on the other, where Tatars live
together. Novye Tatyshly is the administrative center of a rural settlement with four villages
and it has a kolkhoz, where the four brigades are organized according to village-belonging.
There is a school, a library, a kindergarten, a post-office, a hotel working periodically and three
small shops financed by local businessmen.
9.) The location of Novye Tatyshly in the district
Novye Tatyshly is the main center of the Udmurt ethnic revival as I explained above. I
carried out two anthropological fieldworks in Bashkortostan in August of 2008 and April-July
of 2012. During my fieldworks I participated in sacrifices and other Udmurt celebrations,
school- and district rituals like the Victory Day. I spent a lot of time in IKC and NKC studying
their work and visited school-museums all over the district. Due to my trips I have seen not
only Udmurt, but also Tatar museums. In the focus of my analysis are the Udmurt school-
museums and their activity, but I am going to reflect on Tatar exhibitions for two reasons. On
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the one hand, Tatar museums serve as control-material for my argument, thus in the light of the
comparison, differences based on ethnic dimension can be seen vividly. On the other hand, as I
emphasized before, these museums are local institutions focusing on locality and district and
their ethnic separation and classification is slightly artificial, but still valid taking into account
the first room of museums: ethnography.
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Treasure Chests of Schools
In this chapter I am going to describe three museums in order to see more precisely
what the main and relevant subjects of kraevedenie are in Tatyshly district. It is necessary to
give a thick description of them in order to highlight which fields constitute kraevedenie in
localities and how they are structured and designed in school-museums. In addition, the display
of exhibitions provides the possibility to see not only similarities, but also differences between
them, which tell about local (village) aspects of content.
I used various kinds of primary sources situated from different angles. First of all, I
relied on the materials of museums, their collections and the thoroughly structured exhibitions
themselves. I argue that exhibitions can be interpreted as narratives, elements of which are
constructed in order, following certain concepts and ideas affected by local actors,
organizations, the actors of republican or state-institutions. This approach helps to find general
aspects of exhibitions and define specific characteristics as well. Secondly, this corpus of
materials is completed by interviews made with teachers about the work proceeding there and
contests, which are very useful to understand what they consider as essential and noteworthy in
the collections, kraevedenie-classes and patriotic upbringing. Thirdly, I am going to cite their
reports written for the museum of district-center and National Children Recreational and
Educational Center of Tourism, Kraevedenie and Excursion led by the Ministry of Education
Republic of Bashkortostan. These reports are parts of the two main databases of “Museums of
Bashkortostan” and “School-museums of Republic of Bashkortostan” of the National Museum
located in the capital, therefore it has to be taken into consideration that reports reflect not only
the teachers’ own thoughts about their work, but also the expectations of these upper
institutions. Finally, the views of local society represented formally in local media and
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informally in rumours are also quoted in this chapter. Although the local narratives are not the
subject of the present thesis, I am going to refer to them at certain points in order to see the
relevance of school-museums not only in the education and among teachers, but also in the
broader local society.
In my analysis I am going to focus on how the local contents of exhibitions are
embedded in broader historical and political contexts and to what extent this arrangement is
affected by teachers, local societies, other museums or methodological brochures published by
the National Children Recreational and Educational Center of Tourism, Kraevedenie and
Excursion. Finally, I am going to illuminate the teachers’ personal motivations in this work by
means of reports written by them and interviews made during my fieldwork.
School-museums
One of the leaders of school-museums wrote in her report: “Museum is a place devoted
to Muses, an institution of tangible and intangible culture and collection of natural history; it is
a completion, guardian, study, exhibition and popularization of them.”68
According to this
approach, the museum is supposed to possess everything related to culture and the nature of
locality as well as it treasures and cherishes this local lore in order to pass on constantly to
younger generations. Because of this great importance of school-museums, almost every school
has a smaller or bigger museum, which means that approximately fifty museums can be found
in the district.69
Fourteen of them are deemed to be the biggest, most prominent and most active
institutions, which hold kraevedenie-classes, work together with students and participate in
68
Nizhniy Baltachevo. Report written by G. M Samirzyanova 69
Even kindergartens have a small corner or room with exhibitions functioning as museum. They usually consist
of only one part: the ethnic culture.
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contests every year. Among them seven possess certification declaring museum as an official
institution, which is the highest prestige among schools.
I am going to describe three Udmurt museums located in Urazgildy, Nizhniy Baltachevo
and Novye Tatyshly. In the description I am going to follow the order of exhibitions that
teachers gave in their reports and they followed it when they guided me in the museums.
10.) Urazgildy, Novye Tatyshly, Nizhniy Baltachevo
They are the largest and the most significant Udmurt museums in the district, what is more, the
first two museums are considered to be models for other museums (including Tatars as well),
where the most fruitful work is produced, while the third museum has an exceptional situation
regarding its institutional background and study groups as well. All of these museums are
characterized by symbols of bright candle, a treasure chest or a warm corner of a house, the
light of which shows proper ways for students and therefore they are worth cherishing. As can
be read in an article by Oshmes: “The museum is a treasure chest for children, teachers and the
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whole society of school, it teaches the history of your people and your country and it is a
luminous light for the people of the village.”70
Urazgildy
Urazgildy takes pride in the first and eldest school-museum of the district. F. G.
Sagadiev started to collect materials in the 1960s and involved students into his work as well.
Almost all artifacts were collected from the families living in Urazgildy by students and
teachers. The first version of the museum was created in the corridor of the school in 1976. In
the course of time the museum was moved frequently, but finally it received a spacious room in
the new building of the school. A number of persons initiated the foundation and the work of
the museum, especially the director, the presidents of kolkhoz and A.V. Gil’maev journalist, to
whom one of the exhibitions is devoted nowadays. The museum received a certification in 1981,
the first in the district.
Although this museum is the smallest one among the three Udmurt museums, it has the
most artifacts, namely 1857. They are separated and exhibited thematically in four rooms. The
first room called “History” is supposed to introduce the history of the village; the kolkhoz and
the school as well as family-trees of local families. These family-trees are very telling examples
of the new educational program initiated by Murtaza Rakhimov. Lineages are designed and
painted in beautiful trees, flowers and different kinds of pictures; therefore they are also worth
being exhibited in the museum. They facilitate to get familiar with kinship and history of
families in the village, thus the study of them supports the cohesion of society.
70
Irina Khuziakhmetova, “Treasure Chest of School”. (Школалэн зарни шыкысэз; Shkolalen zarni shykysez)
Oshmes, 17-05-2012
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11.) Family-tree in the museum
The exhibition of “Military Glory” includes relics of the Civil and Great Patriotic War,
like different kinds of weapons and guns, lists of veterans and soldiers having orders, letters
from the frontline and military uniforms. This part is completed with titles like „They returned
with victory” or „Nobody is forgotten, nothing is forgotten”.
12.) “Relics of the war” 13.) “Courage! Bravery! Honor!”
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The next part, the “Implements of Work and Everyday Life” gives place for traditional
agricultural tools, numismatics and various other objects from the old times. In this part visitors
can see archeological artifacts as well, which were found during the building of the new road.
The last exhibition, the „Peasant House” is decorated with traditional folk costumes, a cradle,
jewelry and household objects.
14.) Woman jewelry
The fame of the museum is intertwined with the name of its leader, Zidymakova Anita
Dil’mukhametovna. She is considered to be the most prominent teacher in Tatyshly district
because of her persistent and tenacious work in the school-museum of Urazgildy and the
successes of her students in competitions. She began to work in the museum in 2001. She not
only maintained the quality of the museum-work, but also improved it with new approaches and
projects: she has applied new methods of professors from universities and uses computers in the
course of classes, which is deemed to be a great step in a small village. She has got a number of
certificates of merit, she was chosen for the title of “Teacher of the Year” in 2008 and she
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received republican recognition for her work in 2011. In 2004 the museum won the title of “The
Best School-Museum of the Republic of Bashkortostan”
Students are always involved in museum-work: they guide guests in the exhibitions and
share their knowledge with them, study kraevedenie of Urazgildy and Tatyshly district and
participate in contests. Dil’mukhametovna’s group often wins prizes; her supervision is equal
with victory: her students received second prize in the contest “By the Roads of the Fatherland”,
third prize in “Malaya Rodina” and second prize in “Bashkortostan – Protected Country”.
Nizhniy Baltachevo
When I was in Tatyshly for the first time in 2008 I did not decide precisely the focus of
my research and I let the people show me what is important for them. Schools and museums
were a crucial part of sightseeing, thus I could recognize the importance of these institutions. Its
reputation preceded the school-museum of Nizhniy Baltachevo, because it is the most
acknowledged museum in the district; so I definitely had to visit it. During my fieldwork in
2012 I already knew that I was going to study museums and whoever I asked about them,
everybody said that I must see Nizhniy Baltachevo.71
Khuziakhmetova M. Kh., teacher of chemistry and biology began to collect
ethnographical materials in the 1980s. The initiation was supported by the local kolkhoz,
teachers and children as well. The school could not provide room for exhibitions till 1996,
when it moved to a new building. In that year the school-museum was opened and later it
received official certification as well.
71
The school a has web-site with information about the museum as well:
http://nijnebaltachevo.my1.ru/index/muzej_shkoly/0-20, accessed: 24-04-2012
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The museum incorporates six rooms. The first one is devoted to nature, where visitors
can get to know the flora and fauna of the native land. In the background the wall is decorated
by a huge painting of the landscape of the native land, which was made together with children.
The history of education displays not only the school and its teachers, but it concentrates on the
work of pioneers and Komsomol organization as well. It is a very important room, because it
gives home to celebrations and meetings of the present-day pioneer organization called
“Golden Bees”.
15.) Attributes of the Pioneer Organization and photos of graduated students
The exhibition of Military Glory consists of many parts. Most boards and placards are
devoted to veterans of the Great Patriotic and Soviet-Afghan War, who returned from the
frontline to their native land. The second part describes women’s situation during war-times,
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who worked in kolkhozes, cut trees, drove herds and drove tractors instead of men. The final
section of Military Glory commemorates soldiers who died in the war. This is the only museum
where we can meet the memory of the Chechen War, because the village lost two soldiers in
Chechnya. Their biographies and photos are exhibited under the inscription “Chechnya – Our
Pain”. This room is the primary place for lessons held by veterans, when they speak about war
and the importance of patriotism for children.
16.) “Our fellows” (The four main heroes of the district) 17.) “Chechnya – our pain”
The collection called Agricultural Implements covers more spheres than agricultural
materials; therefore it could seem to be chaotic at first sight. The theoretical focal point of the
exhibition is that “every people have to know the life of their ancestors, customs, tradition and
life-style of the nation.”72
The word ‘ancestors’ refers to peasants who lived before the Russian
Revolution in 1917, thus, everything in this room illustrates the life in the 19th
century. Coins,
kitchen utensils, agricultural and hunting implements are exhibited, all of which were collected
72
Nizhniy Baltachevo, report written by G. M. Samirzyanova
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in the village and possessed by local inhabitants. Two boards are devoted to different themes:
the role of Udmurt prayers and the history and the family-tree of the Baymiev family. These
stories go back to the 17th
century, that is to say, they belong to the knowledge of ancestors’ life:
Udmurts, who settled down in the village. This part is intertwined with the next one, the
Peasant House, where an entire Udmurt interior is built with a woman- and man-side and a real
stove. The exhibition is full of Udmurt costumes and jewelry, which are titled in Udmurt. The
heart of the room is a very old loom, which was given by an old woman from the village, on
which children can learn weaving.
18.) The Peasant House
The last section introduces the history and life of the kolkhoz. The visitors can read the
biographies of Heroes of Labor and they can get familiar with the stories of the building of the
school, the dairy product company and tractor park. It includes the biography of the most
emblematic Udmurt figures, like kolkhoz presidents and R.B. Galyamshin as the founder and
leader of NKC.
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19.) Prides of Udmurts 20.) Honoured Workers
From 2000 the leader of the museum is Gul’fira Mukhametgayanovna Samirzyanova,
who holds kraevedenie-classes, initiated many projects and works together with students
continuously. One of her most famous programs was the so-called “Experts” in 2004-2010, in
the framework of which she and her students studied kraevedenie systematically, completed the
museum with new contents, organized thematic tours in the museum and camps for children
from neighboring villages.
Novye Tatyshly
The school-museum of Novye Tatyshly has a slightly different story than other
museums. It was built in 1996 by the initiation of R.B. Galyamshin as president of NKC and it
has got a place in the building of the club-house. Although the museum is considered to be a
school-museum, originally it belonged to NKC, and then later IKC took control. Nowadays
teachers want to maintain the museums, because its leader does not have enough time to care
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about and renew exhibitions. Tat’yana Nikoleavna Shaybakova is a prominent kraeved among
Trans-Kama Udmurts and director of IKC. Initially she organized study groups for students in
order to broaden their knowledge of Udmurts and Tatyshly district, but – as she said – students
are too busy to participate in these groups, therefore she stopped holding them.73
On the other
hand, she is also engaged with the work of IKC and organizations of Udmurt performances,
programs and prayers. Thus, the school-museum, which has doubled the area than others do, is
open for visitors and school-lessons as well, but systematic research and work does not proceed
there. Nevertheless, it has got second prize in the republican contest organized on the occasion
of 60th
anniversary of the Great Victory in 2005.
The museum is devoted to the history and culture of all Udmurts living in eight districts
in Bashkortostan. However, it does not cover entirely the description of all territories inhabited
by Udmurts; rather it represents a generalized picture of Udmurt culture and the display of the
most emblematic figures of contemporary Udmurt life and politics. The introductory exhibition
located in the corridor is dedicated to the memory of Mensadik Garipov, the famous Trans-
Kama Udmurt painter, who was born in the neighboring village. On the left wall his biography
and nine original paintings are displayed, while on the opposite wall visitors can see maps and
figures of the district and its former administrative entity (volost’) from the 18th
up to the 20th
century. The first room, the ‘Udmurt House’ is supposed to introduce Udmurt ethnography with
a furnished interior from the 19th
century decorated with costumes and kitchen-utensils. The
room of ‘Peasant Lifestyle’ is a usual representation of traditional implements of agriculture,
but it is completed with old coins and banknotes as well.
73
Interview made with Shaybakova, 21-05-2012
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21.) The Udmurt House
22.) Peasant Lifestyle
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The ‘Education in the Village’ gives a comprehensive overview of the history of the
school and the pioneer organization, as well as introducing the next part of the museum with
separated boards of teachers who fought in World War II.
23.) Education in the Village
The fourth section called Military Glory commemorates veterans and soldiers who died
in the Civil, Great Patriotic and Soviet-Afghan War. In the middle of the room a small shrine-
like structure stands devoted to heroes of the Great Patriotic War. The structure painted in red
has the shape of a pentagon and the five walls start from the five points of the red star, in which
the ceiling ends. The ceiling is depicted by heroic scenes of war like soldiers in action, air fights
or idealistic depiction of strong and muscular men. At the entrance of the shrine; the first
picture shows the date of the beginning of the war and the last picture shows the date of the end
of the war, while in the middle of the shrine an obelisk with a red star on top can be seen with
the names of the dead written on a board.
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24.) The obelisk and lists of heroes in the structure
25.) The ceiling of the structure
The last exhibition gives an account of the History of the Development of Agriculture,
namely the kolkhoz. It focuses on the biographies of presidents, especially R.B. Galyamshin’s
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work; prizes and achievements of the kolkhoz and economic indicators of production. In this
room visitors can see a number of photos depicting Galyamshin with the ex-president of
Bashkortostan, Murtaza Rakhimov.
26.) History of the Development of Agriculture
Different Levels of History Represented in the Museum
As I mentioned before, kraevedenie can cover more levels of local history: the district,
the rural settlement and the village. Exhibitions incorporate all these levels, therefore their
characteristics are very similar but different at the same time: they follow the same structure
and have exhibitions of the same fields, but their content is more variable.
Based on the above, five elemental parts can be differentiated. One of these main fields,
the so-called “Peasant lifestyle” or “Peasant house” is manifested in a typified version of a
furnished house-interior from the 19th
century, but it is completed with folk costumes and
traditional agricultural instruments as well. The next topic devoted to school tells the history of
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the institution and its building, it has lists of teachers and graduated students and it often
includes an account of the local organizations of the pioneer movement. The history of kolkhoz
focuses on the leaders and the achievements of brigades and different sections of labor. The
next part, the memory of war heroes commemorates soldiers who participated and died in the
Great Patriotic and Soviet- Afghan War. Finally, the last sections display biographies and
personal things of famous writers, singers or painters born in that village. This structural ideal is
valid not only in the case of Udmurt museums discussed above, but all museums located in the
district. It seems to be a general conception, compared to which each museum is created in
accordance with their possibilities regarding space and the wealth of collections.
As for collections, the same pattern can be seen everywhere. Materials, especially
ethnographical and military artifacts, are collected mainly by students and teachers from old
people living in the villages. Photographs of students, soldiers and kolkhoz-workers are
provided by schools, centers of rural settlements and kolkhozes. Essays of students written on
certain subjects (e.g.: family-tree research) are also displayed in school-museums, which
emphasize student-work and the educational role of these institutions. Inscriptions and texts
explaining the historical background of exhibitions are written by teachers and leaders of
museums.
These texts and inscriptions are written in Russian and sometimes they are completed
with Bashkir translations as well. In the ethnically specified exhibitions, for instance in Udmurt
interiors, artifacts have Udmurt title and we can see some original letters sent from the frontline
written in Udmurt in the exhibitions of Military Glory. Although the language of education and
contests is always Russian, Udmurts have their own expressions in their language for the most
important keywords. They use them, if teachers have to explain the Russian versions for
Udmurt children or if journalists of Oshmes publish articles on school-museums. Kraevedenie
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is called ‘shaertodon’ (шаертодон) deriving from the words ‘shaer’ (шаер: land, country) and
‘todyny’ (тодыны: to know) and it means the knowledge of country. Shaer is the Udmurt
equivalent of krai and it is used in phrases like ‘pichi shaer’ (пичи шаер) meaning little land
and used instead of Little Motherland or ‘vordskem shaer’ (вордскем шаер), which means
‘rodnoi krai’, the land or country, where somebody was born. In this context ‘vordskem gurt’
(вордскем гурт) is also a frequent expression used for that village, where somebody was born.
Besides them, Udmurts apply Russian words like ‘strana’ (страна: country) or Rodina (Родина:
Motherland).
All of these expressions – including the original Russian phrases discussed above, too –
tell us a very crucial aspect of these museums and kraevedenie as well. As Little Motherland is
embedded in the larger Motherland, the local contents of kraevedenie cannot be acquired
without the knowledge of broader contexts, because each and every section is embedded in a
larger background. As one of the articles in Oshmes says: “it is difficult to understand the life
without the skill of connecting the little and great Motherland.”74
The ethnographic part is contextualized in the combination of the legacy of the 19th
century form of ethnic cultures and the framework of peasant lifestyle of prerevolutionary times.
This combination constitutes the very essence of these exhibitions, because while they are
supposed to display ethnic characteristics and features, they are all bound in the theme of
peasantry. As I mentioned, Tatar museums also consist of the same parts as Udmurts do, but
one can suppose easily that the ethnographic section of Udmurt and Tatar museums have
elemental differences regarding their distinct ethnic cultures. Although ethnic labels are
determined by ethnic groups being the majority in the given village, their collection is filled
74
Venera Timirshina, “Little Candle, But Its Warmth Is Strong” (Сюсьтыл пичи - пöсез кужмо; Syusytyl pichi,
pösez kuzhmo) Oshmes, 16-02-2012
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with similar objects and framed in the same way. Mainly traditional costumes and old
agricultural tools are exhibited, which represent their ethnic characteristics as well, but these
objects are put into a common denominator by using the notion of peasant lifestyle as a
historical background. On the other hand, these parts have additional political contexts, too.
During the Soviet era – because some of these museums were founded in socialist times –
ethnic culture could be discussed in the framework of internationalist ideology propagating the
friendship of peoples and supporting ethnic folklore. Nowadays contemporary politics
emphasizing multiethnicity as a value provides opportunities to cherish ethnic culture and
represent it in many fields, for instance in school-museums. Thus, the national symbol of the
flower with seven petals symbolizing the seven ethnic groups living in Bashkortostan is
realized in other ways as well: ethnographic collections of Udmurt school-museums are
supposed to be the “Udmurt petal”, and we can find six other petals in museums of other ethnic
groups.
In the next three exhibitions – history of school, memory of wars and history of kolkhoz
– differences based on ethnic culture cannot be observable at all. Although there are a few
references on the ethnic belonging of the population of the given village, they do not constitute
basic distinctiveness in structure or content. All of them are framed in the historical background
of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation and focuses on these larger
and smaller (local) processes. This statement is applicable for all museums in the districts
(including Tatars as well), therefore the following analysis is valid for all of them.
The history of the school is embedded in the history of zemstvo and the development of
the Soviet school-system. The schools of Novye Tatyshly and Nizhniy Baltachevo were
founded by the zemstvo (1903 and 1908); the school of Urazgildy came into being in the Soviet
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period (1927).75
The larger history embraces the story of local schools as visitors can read it on
the exhibited boards:
Due to the development of capitalist economy in Russia zemskaya reform could be
introduced in 1864. According to the regulations of zemskie institutions provincial
(gubernskie), county (uezdnye) bodies and municipal councils (upravy) were created.
These councils ratified the distribution of budget and zemskie commitments, elected
provincial and district superiors and controlled the zemstvo itself as well. Zemstvo was
engaged in infrastructure, guards, wealth, post-office, healthcare and education. Zemskie
schools were the elementary schools in Russia in 1864-1918. They were opened in rural
settlements and financed by zemstvo. The duration of education lasted mainly three or
four years. Kaypanovskoe zemstvo was founded in Tatyshly district (volost’), Birsk
County, Ufa Province. Novye Tatyshly belonged to this zemstvo, and in 1903 three
summer schools were opened for Udmurt children with education based on Russian
language.76
The quotation highlights not only the background of the foundation of school, but the whole
historical framework as well as providing basic knowledge of zemstvo institutions. The focal
point of periodization is clearly the zemskaya reform, because the institution was the first one
in Russian history, which facilitated the foundation of schools throughout the empire for all
children regardless of their social-hierarchical, ethnic or religious belonging.
The periodization follows the general, official periodization of Russian history, thus the
next section of the history of school is always the Soviet times with the most important event,
the Great Patriotic War. Hard years of schools are represented in biographies and photos of
teachers and students who went to the frontline, fought and died or came back with victory.
Most of the texts discuss the local aspects of the following decades until the dissolution of the
Soviet Union and add some information about the 1990s. However, there is no outlook on
Soviet and Russian larger processes; there is no mention of the Soviet collapse at all. The
75
Zemstvo schools were elementary schools in the Russian Empire which were opened by zemstvos, the district
and provincial bodies of self-government. 76
Novye Tatyshly
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history of schools overarches the breakdown of the Soviet system and binds the two historical
periods with its continuity.
The exhibition of school gives place to the symbolic attributes of pioneer organizations
like ties, flags or drums, pioneer uniforms and merits of the foremost pioneers. The ars poetica
and the message of this movement are emphasized by such famous Leninian quotations like
“Be prepared!”, “Always prepared!” or “Our task is to study”. Lenin, as the father of the
pioneer movement, is often depicted in paintings or life-size (or even bigger) busts. His
philosophy and ideology presented in the exhibitions support the contemporary pioneer
movements and emphasize the importance of the labor of love.
The third section of school-museums is also drenched in certain ideologies. First and
foremost heroic soldiers stand in the focus of the memory of wars; nevertheless their deed and
performed duties can be interpreted only in greater ideas. The main mission of the Great
Patriotic War was the defense of the Motherland. The famous Soviet propaganda poster
“Motherland is calling!” can be found in almost all school-museums and the mention of Her in
inscriptions and various kinds of texts is also very frequent. The participation in the war is
interpreted as patriotic duty; therefore soldiers and veterans fought in the Great Patriotic War
are named patriots in texts and everyday-life as well. Their biographies always culminate in
their heroic and patriotic deed: participation in the war and dying for their Motherland.
As I explained previously, the memory of the Great Patriotic War has an essential role
in the Rossiysskiy nation-building. Its memory has to be passed on to younger generations
continuously; therefore it is an integral part of the education and patriotic upbringing. It
conveys not only its memory, but related ideas and values such as heroism, patriotism, loyalty
and the devotion to the Motherland. The aim of these exhibitions is completed with
kraevedenie-classes held by veterans and the annual march on the school-yard on the occasion
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of Victory Day on 9th
of May. Through these lessons students learn not only about the Soviet
past, but also about how to be a good citizen and patriot in the Russian Federation as well.
The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan has a different ideological background. In this
case soldiers are considered to be internationalists, who fought for the great idea of friendship
of peoples in order to maintain the achievements of socialism and ensure the possibility to carry
out its future goals in a fraternal socialist state. In neighboring districts there are some schools
named after internationalists who were students of the schools and died in Afghanistan. These
exhibitions especially emphasize the importance of internationalism, for which these students
died. Nevertheless, the memory of this war has relevance for all school-museums that I have
seen. The essence of internationalism – peaceful cohabitation and cooperation of a number of
ethnic groups – can be converted easily into the contemporary idea of multiethnicity considered
to be a main value in Bashkortostan and the Russian Federation as well. This thought
strengthens the place of all ethnic groups in the republic and federation as well.
The wars affected the work of local kolkhozes, too. The two exhibitions are intertwined,
because in the room of Military Glory visitors can read texts about the women’s role in the war-
time agriculture:
What an immense burden was lying on the women’s shoulders! Medals for combat and
medals for work are made of the same metal. It is impossible to overestimate the merits
of the home front – it was a reliable support for the army. In war-time there was a motto:
“There is no victorious front without a strong home front. The real fight was on the labor
front with its own victories and losses. 77
The periodization of history of the kolkhoz is adjusted to Soviet national history. Their
story is a combination of the history of the local kolkhoz (lists of workers, presidents, buildings,
etc.) and the discussion of broader contexts, which affected the development of the institution:
77
Novye Tatyshly
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After the Great October Revolution the economic situation of the country was very
difficult. There was not enough bread and other products. Small farms could not come
out from the misery. Therefore the party decided to incorporate these small farms into
kolkhozes and cooperatives [артель?]. (…)
The stable development of the kolkhoz had changed with the beginning of the Great
Patriotic War. All working men went to the frontline and all work in the kolkhoz was
lying on the shoulders of old people, women and youth. (…)
The social-economic development of the country began to decline due to the transition of
market relations. But our kolkhoz endeavored to come out from this difficult situation
and looked for ways of self-financing – it sells meat and grain to the state.
As can be seen, the national history of the Soviet Union constitutes the main framework for
these texts, because without this background, the local events and changes cannot be explained.
The kolkhoz-exhibitions also have hidden moral messages. The economic indicators are
supposed to present the constant growth of production and their curves are going up even if the
production of the kolkhoz stagnated in consecutive years. The progressive development is
indispensable, which is ensured by the hard-working people. Accordingly, the biographies of
merited workers emphasize the importance of the labor of love and diligence, which is honored
and rewarded by the society.
In this context previous and present-day presidents have got a special attention in the
space of the museum, because they contributed to the development of the kolkhoz to a large
extent. Many of them controlled not only the work in the kolkhoz, but also facilitated and
supported the foundation of school-museums. The presence of the current presidents’ memory
in the museums has a special aspect regarding that everything included in the museums is
related to the past. Thus, their work is already embedded in the glorious past and in the memory
of those who worked for the society. Hereby, their power is much more stabilized presumably
in the present-day circumstances and local social relations.
Galyamshin, the leader of the National-Cultural Center of Trans-Kama Udmurts has a
unique status among these presidents. In Novye Tatyshly his life-story and photos taken of him
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dominate in the collection, which are supposed to present him as the president of the kolkhoz,
the head of the rural settlement and the main leader of Trans-Kama Udmurts as well. The most
relevant part of his social network, his fruitful relationship with Murtaza Rakhimov as ex-
president of Bashkortostan, is also represented by means of photos of the two of them. Literally
the same version of his biography is also displayed in Nizhniy Baltachevo under the title “The
pride of Udmurts of our district”. He is included not only of the history of kolkhoz, but he is
also important as a person, who did so many things for Udmurts.
This thought leads us to the last part of the museums, the memory of famous artists.
Among the examined three museums only Novye Tatyshly possesses such an exhibition. This is
because none of the three villages have famous writers or singers, but because the museum in
Novye Tatyshly is considered to be a museum of all Trans-Kama Udmurts, it had the chance to
devote a small exhibition to Mensadik Garipov, the most famous Trans-Kama Udmurt artist.
However, in other museums in the district there are a number of exhibitions of Tatar and
Bashkir singers and writers, who were born in the given village. These people raise the fame of
the village, the district and the ethnic groups as well. The local museums are named after them
and the museum in the district-center represents all of them. The ethnic belonging has got
significance especially in the case of writers and singers, who use their own native-language in
their art, thus, they contribute to its cherishing. In the case of Garipov, his unique graphic
technique is emphasized as an Udmurt peculiarity:
M. Garipov as our first graphic artist managed to find a specific Udmurt, intimate tone of
graphic representation of stories. He knows how to accentuate astonishingly local and
national features.78
As can be seen, there are standard fields of school-museums, but the contents of these
fields adjust to local peculiarities. Who defines which fields can be involved in school-
78
Novye Tatyshly
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museums? What affects its structure, compared to which an exhibition can be different? As T.
N. Shaybakova, the leader of the school-museum in Novye Tatyshly, told me, “museums are
similar to each other to a large extent, because they see and copy each other’s exhibition”.79
In
this case Urazgildy had a pioneer role as it was the very first museum in the district in 1976.
But museums of other districts also can be ideal for the museums of Tatyshly. For instance, the
shrine-like structure located in the third room in Novye Tatyshly and devoted to the heroes of
the Great Patriotic War has an entirely identical pair in the museum in Bolshoy Kachak
(Kaltasy district) founded in 1981.80
27-28.) The shrine-like structure of the school-museum in Bolshoy Kachak
The similarity is obvious (see photos 24-25). Both of them have the shape of a pentagon
and the five red walls start from the red stars, in which the ceilings end. The ceilings are
depicted by heroic scenes of war, while in the middles of the shrines obelisks with red stars at
the tops can be seen with the names of the dead written on a board.
79
Interview made with T. N. Shaybakova; 21-05-2012 80
Venera Il’baeva, “Corner Giving Warmth” (Шуныт сётись сэрег; Shunit syotis’ sereg). Oshmes, 26-04-2012. I
visited this museum in 2008.
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The design and the structure of school-museums are shaped not only by each other, but
other factors as well. As I mentioned, the National Children Recreational and Educational
Center of Tourism, Kraevedenie and Excursion led by the Ministry of Education Republic of
Bashkortostan is the official organizer of republican contests among school-museums. The
winners receive valuable prizes;81
moreover, they can win official certification for their
museums as well. The center publishes methodological brochures in order to help the work and
preparation of museums for contest and these brochures contain advice regarding design,
structure and content of exhibitions as well. The possession of an official certification is very
prestigious in local societies; therefore they do everything to receive it and follow the
instructions of these brochures carefully. The methodology provides a thorough description the
proper classification of artifacts, gives advice how to write well-stylized texts and inscriptions
and how to perform a well-structured and meaningful guide in the museum, but it does not
discuss the details of the content of exhibitions. The recommendations regarding the
classification unify the basic structure of all school-museums, but it is filled in with content by
local societies.
The Center of Civic and Patriotic Education
School-museums not only display local history, but they give home for kraevedenie-
classes and pioneer-meetings as well. Museum-pedagogy is considered to be a cornerstone of
patriotic upbringing, which has two crucial aspects: shaping the students’ historical
consciousness and their loyalty to the (little) Motherland.
The first aspect, the importance of history and the knowledge of the past often appear as
the primary reason of the foundation in the teachers’ narratives, both in their reports and
81
E.g.: camera
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interviews made with them. In answer to the question why they founded the museum they
emphasized the importance of the knowledge of the past:
Why? Look, nowadays there are televisions, computers, etc., everything! But in those
times…! Our children have to know that how people lived without television, without
anything. (…) And it is for the guarding of our culture in order to pass it on to our
students.82
Why is the museum so important? Because people, who do not know their past, do not
have future.83
The school-museum provides the opportunity for students to consider history not as an
abstract concept, but as a concrete fact. Nowadays the museum has a diverse palette,
which facilitates the shaping of students’ historical consciousness and the development
of creative work of research and arts. (…)
The proverb says that: “People, who do not know their past, do not have future.” We can
say with firm conviction that we know the past of our grandmothers and grandfathers.
And we cherish the memory of them.84
Nevertheless, people have to learn not only new things, but they have to know old times
as well and remember the past of their parents and grandparents. And the museum
provides a great help in this. (…) The school-museums play a significant role in the
shaping of respect of national history, culture and traditions. 85
These quotations show that the knowledge of the past is deemed to be a basic human
value, without which one cannot have a bright future. The citation of the well-known proverb –
people who do not know their past, do not have future – is a recurring element; my informants
mentioned it very often, when we were talking about museums. School-museums are the
primary places of the study of past and according to the local teachers, they facilitate students’
historical consciousness.
The other aspect, the patriotic loyalty and love of the Motherland can come into being
only through the study of history:
82
Interview made with G. M. Samirzyanova, 03-07-2012, Nizhniy Baltachevo 83
Interview made with T. N. Shaybakova, 21-05-2012 84
Nizhniy Baltachevo, report written by G. M. Samirzyanova 85
Novye Tatyshly, report written by T. N. Shaybakova
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[The museum] plays a crucial role in the education and helps to nurture students for love
of their own krai, elder generations and the little and great Motherland as well. (…)
School museum is a center of civic and patriotic education of students in the school.86
Our work is based on the new federal education standards, according to which we have
to teach about the village, people, Motherland and respect of family. Every child must be
aware of that somebody can become a good person only if he appreciates his Motherland
and knows the world around him.87
Little Motherland is the focal point of every people’s life. From his first days, the child
soaks up the charm of his own krai with lullabies. (…)
Rodnik (spring) and Rodina (Motherland) have common stem. The little spring flows
into great rivers and the knowledge of the history of our own Little Motherland serves
the fundament of every people’s life.88
The last quotation – the motto of the thesis – reflects the embeddedness of local content
and the little Motherland as I explicated previously. All little motherlands are parts of the
greater Motherland as kraevedenies are little segments of the national (Rossiyskiy) history.
School-museums and kraevedenie facilitate that historical consciousness turns into national
consciousness; this is how the study of history and the love of Motherland become closely
intertwined.
These thoughts can be found in the introductions of methodological brochures and
handbooks as well, which probably affect the teachers’ opinion about the importance of their
own work to a large extent:
School-museums have prominent place in the system of education and additional
trainings. They play crucial role in the formation of national consciousness of students,
their patriotism and self-determination. The introduction to intangible and tangible
culture of krai, its national traditions and origin constitutes the core of school-
museums.89
(Italics added)
86
Nizhniy Baltachevo, report written by G. M. Samirzyanova 87
Venera Timirshina, “Little Candle, but Its Flame Is Strong”. (Сюсьтыл пичи - пöсез кужмо; Syusytyl pichi,
pösez kuzhmo) Oshmes, 16-02-2012 88
Novye Tatyshly, report written by T. N. Shaybakova 89
“Metodicheskie rekomendacii po provedeniyu ekskursiy v shkol’nykh muzeyakh” [Methodological Guideline of
Guided Tours in School-Museums]; published by National Children Recreational and Educational Center of
Tourism, Kraevedenie and Excursion.
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School-museums reveal effectively their educational and creative potency not only
within the school but in the village, town, district; and they become systemically
important centers of educational work in these territories. This activity, which is carried
out on the basis of school museums, allows the younger generation to understand
important values in life, such as memory and duty, morality and spirituality, the desire to
be useful for their community, and therefore – to be worthy citizens of their
Motherland.90
(Italics added)
The brochures often emphasize that patriotism and national consciousness are all-
encompassing values, which include additional values – as the last quoted text says – “such as
memory and duty, morality and spirituality, the desire to be useful for their community”. Thus,
through the attainment of historical knowledge students acquire moral attitudes and behaviors
as well, which are the fundament of the ideal and proper citizen. That is how school-museums
become the centers of civic and patriotic education.
90
“Putevoditel’ po shkol’nym muzejam Respubliki Bashkortostan” [Guidebook of School-Museums of Republic
of Bashkortostan] published by Ministry of Education Republic of Bashkortostan – National Children Recreational
and Educational Center of Tourism, Kraevedenie and Excursion, Ufa 2010: 4.
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Conclusion
The field of kraevedenie has been an obvious interface of the dialectical relationship of
state historical politics and local movements during the course of the 19-20th
century. Initially,
the romantic desire of the movement to get familiar with the native land met the economic and
industrial interests of the Russian Empire, but that time it was more spontaneous and self-
shaping knowledge of the local societies than later. During the Soviet times, its institutionalized
form was under state-control, which intended to drench all spheres of life with socialist
ideologies. The main areas of kraevedenie became the local aspects of the elaboration of the
Soviet school- and kolkhoz-system and later the glorious peak of the Soviet history, the
memory of the Great Patriotic War. The constant local research resulted in school-museums,
which as drop in the ocean have reflected the larger processes, in which their histories have
been deeply embedded. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the new state has taken up these
museums and kraevedenie and they became the primary place of patriotic education.
Contents of all exhibitions were affected by the ongoing Russian historical politics, the
main aim of which was to create a historical continuity between the Soviet and Russian past
and to elevate multiethnicity as a value of the society. In line with this, school-museums have
not changed their exhibitions: the history of kolkhozes, schools and memory of wars as the
important Soviet past constitute integral part of kraevedenie; ethnographical collections in turn
fit perfectly the ideology of multiethnicity. These ideological backgrounds are relevant in
narrower political context as well, since the political and separatist possibilities of
Bashkortostan were determined by the issue of multiethnicity. School-museums in
Bashkortostan became the place of local, ethnic and Rossiyskiy history, while Bashkir
nationalizing processes have been manifested in other educational programs like the family-tree
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project. Nevertheless, school-museums have served as representative surfaces of the renewed
identity-policy of Trans-Kama Udmurts. In the examined school-museums Galyamshin appears
not only as the president of the kolkhoz, but also as the most emblematic Udmurt person and
the main leader of Trans-Kama Udmurts, who revived Udmurt culture after the Soviet
dissolution, created a number of opportunities and ensured financial background. He supported
the foundation of all Udmurt museums, thus he initiated not only a part of the Udmurt revival,
but he strengthened his power and prestige among Trans-Kama Udmurts as well. Consequently,
the contents of museums and kraevedenie are shaped by different historical politics, namely
federal, republic and ethnic agency as well.
Local teachers have essential role in the patriotic upbringing. The knowledge of the past
is considered to be one of the basic pillars of patriotism, which is transmitted through
kraevedenie. Thus, teachers’ work has a large prestige in the society, which keeps increasing as
a result of the improvement of their teaching methods, participating and winning contests. They
also augment the importance of their work in their reports; as one of them wrote: “Museum is a
church, the place of mental work.”91
In the present thesis I intended to highlight how wider political processes influence local
phenomenon and what the localities and local actors add to these broader processes. The
method of the long-term and intensive anthropological fieldwork and participant observation
proved to be an excellent tool, which facilitated to illuminate the local aspects and agency of a
larger topic. This analysis and methodology can be an excellent example of multilevel
academic research that combines different fields of science such as history and anthropology.
91
Novye Tatyshly, report written by T. N. Shaybakova
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Internet sources
450 years with Russia! Official website devoted to the celebration of the 450-
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Bashkiriya Turistskaya (Tourist Bashkiriya); www.bashturist.ru
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Museums:
Nizhniy Baltachevo,
web-site: http://nijnebaltachevo.my1.ru/index/muzej_shkoly/0-20
Novye Tatyshly
Urazgildy
Reports:
Nizhniy Baltachevo written by G. M. Samirzyanova
Novye Tatyshly written by T. N. Shaybakova
Interviews:
With A. D. Zidymakova, 13-08-2008, Urazgildy
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With T. N. Shaybakova, 21-05-2012, Novye Tatyshly
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Articles
Khuziakhmetova, Irina. “Treasure Chest of School”. (Школалэн зарни
шыкысэз; Shkolalen
Timirshina, Venera zarni shykysez) Oshmes, 17-05-2012
Il’baeva, Venera. „Corner Giving Warmth” (Шуныт сётись сэрег; Shunit syotis’
sereg). Oshmes, 26-04-2012.
“Little Candle, but Its Flame Is Strong”. (Сюсьтыл пичи - пöсез кужмо;
Syusytyl pichi, pösez kuzhmo) Oshmes, 16-02-2012
Methodological brochures
“Metodicheskie rekomendacii po provedeniyu ekskursiy v shkol’nykh muzeyakh”
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and Excursion.
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Education Republic of Bashkortostan – National Children Recreational and
Educational Center of Tourism, Kraevedenie and Excursion, Ufa, 2010